Clearance SaleXerus & Ratufa

Xerus & Ratufa, mongers and purveyors of master works of scholarship both classic and contemporary, invite the better sort of reader to share in the treasures of our amassed wealth of back titles.

From the Advances in Historical Linguistics Series

Fergus Fingal-Ossian, The True Origins of the English Language (1995). English is typically classified by historical linguists as a West Germanic language that has developed into its present form over several millennia. This, however, is an antiquated view of the facts devised by people who had never had to teach school children. Rather, English is, was, and always shall be English, pure, simple, and unchanging, and the supposed evidence of changes in the language attested in the manuscripts is spurious. In fact, the more widely public education has been spread in society, the closer to pure English everyone has written. Old English is simply infantile scrawling by unlettered infants, Chaucer had thoroughly incompetent English teachers, and historical linguistics is a farce based on the discarded scraps and first drafts of beginning learners—a survey of all extant manuscripts shows that not a single one of them was even turned in for grading! The last chapter outlines an archeological program to uncover the millennia-old archives of graded tests and essays, which have been kept secret by the powers that be to prevent cheating by later classes; it is expected that when they are uncovered, probably near Westminster or perhaps somewhere in Kent, the history of English will have to be re-written, but then again, as there is in essence no history of an eternally unchanging ideal, there won’t be anything to write. Originally $279.99, now only $15.99 + P&H.

“The greatest impediment to the cultivation of proper English has long been the descriptivist barbarians who muddy the issues by urging the imitation of uneducated louts like Shakespeare, Austen, and Twain. This book does us the signal service of cutting these punks off at the knees. No longer will we have to sit and stew as earlier authors are quoted against us, for this book shows that those earlier texts were never graded by their authors’ teachers. While a few lying liars in academia are going to be out on the street, the rest of us will have lifelong employment publishing corrected versions of badly written, borderline illiterate doggerel like Mac Flecknoe, The Rape of Lucrece, Troilus and Criseyde, In Memoriam, and The Age of Anxiety. Teachers, ready your red pens! Editors, ready your blue pens! Forward, march!” —Lucille Parker Throttlebottom, Blue Serge Suit with a Belt in the Back: A Review of and for True Culture in a Deluded and Denuded Age

Ildiko Xanthippe Stavropoulou-Schwartz, The True Origins of the Latin Language (1997). Latin is typically classified by historical linguists as the major language of a separate Italic branch of the Indo-European languages on the same level as Greek. However, as numerous critics have shown, this is racist, ethnocentric, and probably sexist, ageist, and ableist propaganda by non-Greeks. A close examination of recently uncovered manuscripts demonstrates that in fact Latin was created by Greek colonists between 900 BC and 600 BC as a drastically simplified form of Greek to allow communication with the mentally deficient inhabitants of the Italian peninsula after two centuries of trying to teach them pure Greek failed miserably. Originally $179.99, now only $15.99 + P&H.

“I knew it!” —Byzantion99, soc.culture.greek

Ravi Erlenmeyer­flaskwala, The True Origins of the Greek Language (1998). Greek is typically classified by historical linguists as the major language of a separate branch of the Indo-European languages on the same level as Sanskrit. However, as numerous critics have shown, this is racist, ethnocentric, and probably sexist, ageist, and ableist propaganda by non-Indians. A close examination of recently uncovered manuscripts demonstrates that in fact Greek was created by Indian colonists between 3900 BC and 3600 BC as a drastically simplified form of Sanskrit to allow communication with the mentally deficient inhabitants of the Anatolian peninsula after two centuries of trying to teach them pure Sanskrit failed miserably. Originally $179.99, now only $15.99 + P&H.

“I knew it!” —Hindutva34, soc.culture.indian

Kannudhal Sara­vanan, The True Origins of the Sanskrit Language (1999). Sanskrit is typically classified by historical linguists as the major language of a separate branch of the Indo-European languages, which are seen as the model of human language. However, as numerous critics have shown, this is racist, ethnocentric, and probably sexist, ageist, and ableist propaganda by latecomers to the Indian subcontinent. A close examination of recently uncovered manuscripts demonstrates that in fact Sanskrit was created by the early Dravidian inhabitants of the Indus Valley between 4900 BC and 4600 BC to allow communication with the mentally deficient Aryan barbarians after two centuries of trying to teach them fully human language failed miserably. Originally $179.99, now only $15.99 + P&H.

“I knew it!” —DhalForBreakfast, soc.culture.tamil

Тосапқымыз Балықтың-Майы, The True Origins of the Dravidian Languages (2000). The Dravidian languages are typically classified by historical linguists as a separate language family with no demonstrable ties to other languages. However, as numerous critics have shown, this is racist, ethnocentric, and probably sexist, ageist, and ableist propaganda by bigoted Indo-European splitters who refuse to admit the obvious truth. A close examination of several student dictionaries demonstrates that in fact the Dravidian languages are a bastardized form of Proto-Turkic created between 5900 BC and 5600 BC after two centuries of trying to teach the inhabitants of the Indus Valley human language failed miserably. Originally $179.99, now only $15.99 + P&H.

“I knew it!” —IstanbulUberAlles, soc.culture.turkish

Bob “Bob” Smith, The True Origins of the Languages of Humankind (2001). Human languages are typically considered outgrowths of the natural faculties of the human mind that have developed in a fairly mechanical fashion under their own laws and tendencies. However, as the author shows, this is a species-ist, terra-centric view that unduly flatters humankind. A close examination of the white noise in recordings at major radio telescopes demonstrates that in fact human language was created by travelers from seventy-three distinct star systems in stages between 276,400 YBP and 13,357 YBP in a fairly typical piece of genetic engineering that inexplicably failed and was quarantined to prevent the contamination of other worlds. Originally $179.99, now only $15.99 + P&H.

Slocum Fortescue, Esq., A Study of the Pirate Dialects of English Through Time (3rd ed., 2012). Although the speech of English-speaking pirates has been recorded in writing, in radio, and on film for well over three centuries and has recently seen a renascence of sorts, no scholar has previously undertaken a diachronic study of these materials. Fortescue shows that the detailed extant records of this criminally understudied set of dialects allow us to reconstruct their development and their mutual relations in great detail. Forming a distinct set of dialects that share none of the major diagnostic features recorded after 1600 of better-studied English dialects and that have diverged into almost a distinct language, English pirate dialects constitute a fertile field for historical linguistic and sociolinguistic investigation and hold the promise of revolutionizing our knowledge of the history of English. The 3rd edition updates this classic text by supplementing the large-scale corpus of Revitalized Pirate English collected during the first three International Talk Like a Pirate Days and exhaustively analyzed in the 2nd edition with a thorough study of the entire corpus of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise up to 2012. Originally $379.99, now only $16.95 + P&H.

“Everybody knows pirate talk’s just a crude pidgin spoken by blackguards with cognitive deficiencies so severe as to prevent the pidgin’s evolution into a creole. Everybody except Fortescue, that is, who with this work sails the seas of scholarship in a cut-rate Lost Dutchman that he spends more time pumping water from than navigating towards the truth. Highly recommended for readers with a taste for the absurd or the risible.” —Dwarftosser Poursuivant, Journal of Piratical Studies

“An amazing work of textual legerdemain and strained argumentation that demonstrates that yes, it is possible to rebuild a ship at sea one plank at a time, but it’s really not worth the effort.” —Squintillion Spann, Nunavut Journal of Linguistics

Assorted Flotsam and Jetsam

To clear space on our older shelves at the behest of the fire safety inspectors, the following volumes are now specially priced at $2 apiece or 2 for $3 plus flat book rate.